Their new era may be called Nightmare Tripping, but Don Broco’s show in Watford on September 27 was anything but a nightmare. The band woke up the crowd with two live debuts and a couple tour debuts tucked into their 18-song set at Watford Colosseum, finally giving “Swimming Pools” and “The Corner” their moment onstage as the band kicked off a new UK run.
They started with “True Believers,” complete with an acoustic guitar intro, before jumping into “Nightmare Tripping,” “Gumshield,” “Come Out to LA,” and “Somersaults.” Then came the first big surprise of the night: “Swimming Pools,” making its live debut six months after Nightmare Tripping arrived. The song has a particularly Don Broco origin story, with Rob Damiani explaining that its swimming-pool metaphor came from an old studio joke about a song being successful enough to literally fund one. Needless to say, concert attendees dove right in emotionally…pun intended.
And the new material kept coming. “Euphoria,” “Disappear,” “Cellophane,” and “Hype Man” all made the cut, meaning Watford heard nine of the album’s 11 tracks in one night. Considering Don Broco went into Nightmare Tripping wanting to make their heaviest record yet, hearing that much of it sandwiched between older favorites like “Everybody,” “Bruce Willis,” and “T-Shirt Song” feels like a pretty accurate representation of where the band is right now. The record also brought in some very Broco-sized guests, with Nickelback appearing on the title track and Architects frontman Sam Carter on “True Believers.”
“With every other record, we’d see what felt natural and what came to us,” Don Broco frontman Rob Damiani told Kerrang! “This was the first time that we knew we wanted to keep things heavy, having loved how it felt on 2018’s Technology and 2021’s Amazing Things.” Don Broco is a band that often can’t be placed under just one label — some call them pop, others alternative, and somewhere along the way, they’ve even earned comparisons to the love child of Korn and Limp Bizkit. For a while, they were fine with the first two, but after five years between albums, they sound more than ready to embrace the heavier side of that description.
And if you thought “Swimming Pools” was the last new-song surprise, Don Broco had one more waiting near the end of the night. “The Corner” made its live debut as song No. 16 on the setlist, arriving after “Cellophane” and just before longtime favorite “T-Shirt Song.” By that point, the band had already worked through most of Nightmare Tripping, but saving one debut for the moment when anyone might’ve considered leaving early to beat traffic? Simply genius, and it kept the audience planted firmly where they were until “Hype Man” rounded out the night.
Between two live debuts, nine songs from Nightmare Tripping, and enough older material to keep longtime fans satisfied, Watford got a pretty convincing introduction to this heavier version of Don Broco. If this is what the first night of the UK run looked like, we’re guessing the band still has a few tricks hiding around The Corner. Sorry, we had to. Check out the full September 27 setlist from Watford Colosseum here.
